Not whoever is most naturally willing, which is how it usually gets decided. Organizing office celebrations is a textbook example of what economists call a non-promotable task: necessary work that benefits the organization but does not advance the person doing it. Research published in the American Economic Review found these tasks are allocated systematically unevenly, and that the imbalance is driven largely by expectations about who will say yes.
The answer is that it should be assigned deliberately, rotated, time-boxed, and counted as work.
What does the research say about non-promotable tasks?
Babcock, Recalde, Vesterlund and Weingart examined the allocation of tasks that everyone would prefer somebody else completed. Their finding, across laboratory experiments and field data: women more than men volunteer for such tasks, are asked to volunteer, and accept when asked. (American Economic Review, 2017)
The driver they identify is not preference. It is expectation. Beliefs that women are more likely to say yes appear to be an important cause of the difference, which means the pattern reproduces itself: people are asked because they are expected to accept, and they accept because they were asked. In the study’s working-alone treatment, women accepted a request to take on this kind of task 76% of the time, against 51% for men. That gap in the acceptance rate, not a gap in who is available, is most of what explains why the same person keeps ending up with the party.
Their field data came from a large public university, where an annual email invited over three thousand faculty members to serve on a committee, a classic non-promotable task, and the researchers analyzed who agreed.
The authors’ own examples of non-promotable work include organizing the office party, serving on committees, mentoring new hires and writing reports. Workplace celebrations are not an edge case in this literature. They are the standard illustration.
The follow-on book by Babcock, Peyser, Weingart and Vesterlund reports that the pattern appeared in every profession the authors examined, and that the accumulated time difference is substantial. Those specific figures come from interviews and the book rather than the peer-reviewed paper, so treat them accordingly.
Why does it matter who ends up organizing everything?
If the same person always organizes the leaving cards, the birthday list, the summer social, and everything else in between, three things follow.
It consumes time that has no career return. By definition, non-promotable work is work that will not appear in a promotion case. Hours spent on it are hours not spent on work that would.
It becomes invisible until it stops. Nobody notices a well-run celebration culture. Everybody notices the first missed birthday. The role generates no credit and considerable exposure to blame.
It hardens into identity. Once someone is “the person who does the cards,” reassignment feels like a personal rejection rather than a scheduling change, which makes the arrangement unusually difficult to unwind.
There is also a quality argument, separate from the fairness one. Work assigned by default rather than decision gets default-level attention, which is where missed people and forgotten dates come from.
How do you make the job itself smaller?
Fair rotation of a heavy task is better than unfair allocation of one, but the strongest move is making the task smaller.
Most of the burden is administrative rather than social: knowing the dates, reaching everyone, chasing participation, and tracking who has been included. That part can largely be systematized. What genuinely requires a person is deciding what matters and writing something true about a colleague.
- Keep the date roster in one shared place, not in one person’s head
- Use formats that reach remote and shift staff without extra coordination
- Make participation visible so chasing is targeted rather than blanket
- Agree the budget once, annually, so it is not renegotiated every occasion
A shareable signing link handles both of those at once, since anyone can add their note without creating an account and there is no cap on how many people sign. Delivery can also be scheduled ahead and tracked on a dashboard from scheduled to opened, so the organizer can see who has taken part instead of chasing everyone down individually.
Would you like to send your team celebration messages together as a group? A group appreciation card removes the chasing-signatures half of this job on its own, since everyone adds their note online instead of one person tracking down each teammate. That is a disclosed interest, since a group card is what we build at GreetPool, but it is also literally the fix for the administrative burden described above.
Pair it with an employee gift card if the budget stretches to more than the card itself. Recipients choose their own amount and store, so nobody on the rotation has to guess what fits. A quick appreciation GIF works the same way for a lighter touch, since it takes no more decision time than picking one from a strip.
How do you decide who should own it?
Assign it, do not wait for a volunteer. Asking the room produces the same answer every time, and the research explains why. If nobody is assigned, it defaults to whoever is least able to let it go undone.
Rotate on a fixed schedule, or assign at random. A quarter or six months, named in advance, removes the need for anyone to negotiate their way out, which is the part people find hardest. Random allocation is a reasonable alternative to a fixed order when even a predictable rotation would let people angle for a lighter turn. Either method beats leaving the choice open to a volunteer.
Time-box it. Name the expected hours. Unbounded responsibility expands and cannot be handed over cleanly.
Count it. If it is real work, it belongs in workload conversations and in performance reviews. Naming it as a contribution partially converts a non-promotable task into a visible one, which is the only real remedy the research suggests.
Check the pattern, not the instance. Any single assignment looks reasonable. Look at who has held it for the last two years.
Do not assign it to the most junior person by default. The reasoning is usually “they have the most capacity,” and the effect is to load the person with the least power with the work that carries the least credit.
What should the celebration owner actually be responsible for?
Vagueness is what makes this role expand. Define it:
- Maintaining the roster of dates, from an authoritative source rather than memory
- Deciding what gets marked and what does not, within an agreed budget
- Making sure remote, part-time and on-leave colleagues are included
- Nothing else
Explicitly not their job: paying up front and claiming later, chasing signatures across time zones by hand, or absorbing blame for a company-wide budget decision.
What if it’s always been you?
Some practical framing, since a good share of readers are in this position.
Raise it as workload allocation, not as a complaint. “I’ve held this for two years, I think it should rotate” is a scheduling proposal. It does not require anyone to have done something wrong, which makes it much easier to agree to.
Ask for it to be counted, whether or not it rotates. If it is going to continue, it belongs in your review.
And propose the rotation rather than requesting relief. A named successor and a start date is a plan. An expression of tiredness is a problem for someone else to solve, and it will usually be solved by leaving things as they are.
Ownership of the celebration is one piece of a bigger set of choices about how a team marks these moments. See what the research says about being left out of a team celebration, whether employees actually prefer public or private recognition, and what to do when someone doesn’t want to be celebrated.
← More message ideas. Browse what to write for every occasion, by recipient and tone.
Research cited
- Babcock, L., Recalde, M. P., Vesterlund, L., & Weingart, L. (2017). Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability. American Economic Review, 107(3), 714–747. doi:10.1257/aer.20141734
- Babcock, L., Peyser, B., Vesterlund, L., & Weingart, L. (2022). The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work.
- Babcock, L., Recalde, M. P., & Vesterlund, L. (2018). Why Women Volunteer for Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions. Harvard Business Review. Link
Frequently asked questions
Who should be responsible for organizing office celebrations?
Someone assigned deliberately, on a fixed rotation, with named time boundaries and the work counted in performance conversations. It should not be left to whoever volunteers, because research shows volunteering for this kind of task is not evenly distributed.
Is organizing the office party a non-promotable task?
Yes, and it is one of the standard examples in the research literature. Non-promotable tasks benefit the organization but do not advance the person doing them.
Why does the same person always end up organizing things at work?
Research published in the American Economic Review found that beliefs about who will say yes drive who gets asked. The pattern is self-reinforcing: people are asked because they are expected to accept, and accept because they were asked.
Should the office manager or EA own team celebrations?
Often they hold it by default, which is worth examining rather than assuming. If it stays with them, it should be an explicit part of the role with allocated time, not additional work absorbed alongside everything else.
How do you rotate responsibility for team celebrations fairly?
Fixed intervals, named in advance, with a defined scope and a handover of whatever list or system the role depends on. Fixed rotation matters because it removes the need for anyone to negotiate their way out.